


Homeward Bound

by MrMich



Category: No. 6 - All Media Types
Genre: Baking, Cherry cake!, Gen, In my mind cherry cake has become a symbol of eternal love and loyalty, Karan's excellent parenting, M/M, Reunions, and you know that Karan is serving up cherry cakes left and right to the family that chose her son
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-07
Updated: 2020-01-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:01:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22152931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrMich/pseuds/MrMich
Summary: Her son is here, in front of her. That is as good a reason to be giddy as any, and Karan finds that she would not be able to stop herself even if she wanted. She imagines the picture the two of them must make, smiling like happy fools in the middle of her home and bakery, the reddened skin on Shion’s wrist cradled firmly in her own hands.
Relationships: Karan & Shion (No. 6), Nezumi/Shion (No. 6)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 55





	Homeward Bound

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the No.6 Secret Santa for [tea-for-you](https://tea-for-you.tumblr.com/)!

Karan takes the croissants from the oven, careful not to burn herself. It’s second nature by now, hardly a conscious thought put towards the action. Shion, though, is much less practiced. 

He hisses as he swipes his wrist against the top of the oven, just against the edge. He gamely holds onto the second tray of flaky pastries. 

Karan looks up at the ceiling as if it has any answers for her. She looks back at her son in exasperation. “Put the tray down, Shion. I’ve told you before and I’ll tell you again, you shouldn’t sacrifice your own well being for a few croissants.” She sets her own tray down on the cooling rack before taking the tray from his hands and doing the same. She holds out her hand. “Let me see your wrist.”

Shion just smiles sheepishly at her and gives his hand over. She takes it and runs it under the cool water from the nearby sink, muttering admonishments as she does. 

“Really, Shion, I know you’re not often here, but you’d think you’d remember to be more careful next time!” She smiles gently at her son. They still don’t have many resources in Lost Town. Less now than they did before, in fact. The fall of No.6 affected a lot of the small things, and for now, all Karan can do is soothe her son’s burn with cool water and a kind smile. 

But it’s enough, she knows. After everything, it is more than enough. Her son is here, in front of her, after all, and that counts for so much. 

As if hearing her thoughts, Shion smiles softly at her. 

Her own smile widens in response. Her son is _here_ , in front of her. That is as good a reason to be giddy as any, and Karan finds that she would not be able to stop herself even if she wanted. She imagines the picture the two of them must make, smiling like happy fools in the middle of her home and bakery, the reddened skin on Shion’s wrist cradled firmly in her own hands. 

Outside the window, the first rays of the dawning light hit the buildings. It pinkens the whole street, lighting the stone steps up and softening the small tufts of short, vibrant green grasses and weeds that grow between the cracks. 

As much as Karan loves her neighbors and the usual bustle of her town, this is her favorite part of the morning. Before anyone else has woken up, before the streets start to fill with people as they start their days. It is the kind of peace that she values in her life now, more so after the upheaval of No.6 and all that came in the aftermath. 

Shion turns away from her then, just barely looking past her. His eyes are unfocused, like he’s watching something in the middle distance. Waiting for something, maybe.

“Mom, can I ask you something?” 

There it was. 

Karan had known that her son had something on his mind. Call it mother’s intuition, or maybe just emotional intelligence, but Karan knew her son well enough to know when something important was on his mind. 

She nodded encouragingly at Shion as she kneaded bread for the rolls she’d soon be popping into the oven. 

“I think that Nezumi might be back.”

Her hands paused above the bread for a brief moment before she continued, pressing into it maybe a little too hard with her fingers and then smoothing it down with the heel of her palm. 

This was not the first time Shion had said that. It wasn’t even the second. 

Both times before had been mistakes. The first, someone in West Block had taken on the stage name Eve. They performed Hamlet, and Shion had been so sure that it would be Nezumi, well used to his flair and fully expecting it to be his grand, dramatic gesture of coming home. 

From what Karan had heard of him, and from the short moment she had met him before he left, she wouldn’t have been surprised either, so they went to see the play, ready to welcome Nezumi home.

They had both been disappointed that day, though Shion far more than her.

The second time, too, had been a case of mistaken identity. Someone with a similar voice half obscured by the noisy gathering of West Block’s bazaars – but Shion had heard it, for just a split second, on his way home. He’d backtracked frantically, trying to catch a glimpse of Nezumi’s smirk, maybe a flutter of his long, tied up hair. In the end, all he was left with was the familiar cadence ringing in his ears, almost mocking as he found nothing of the man himself. 

Shion came into the bakery the next morning. It was early, before Karan had even finished making her pastries and breads for the day, and heavy with the still dark sky and his own thinly worn hope, he told her about what had happened. As they rolled out dough together in the pre-dawn morning, Shion spoke aloud his fears. He had been so sure that it had been Nezumi. At first, he thought it was a test, had held tight onto that last chance, that last hope. But his disappointment at not being able to find Nezumi undercut his words and Karan held him close when, three days later, he finally admitted to himself that it couldn’t have been Nezumi. 

This time, Karan was so suspicious of who it could actually be. She’d seen her son crushed too many times. Most of all, she hated seeing his back turned to her, steps echoing slow and heavy as he left the bakery, returning instead to the home that he’d once shared with Nezumi. 

He always laughed at himself for jumping to conclusions, but Karan couldn’t help but notice how harsh the laughter was, or the slump of his shoulders even as he insisted that he was fine, or the way that his feet dragged slightly, scuffing his shoes against the stone steps outside her shop. 

It was heartbreaking. 

She never wanted her son to look like that. Defeated. Alone. 

And she hoped to every god there might be out there that this time, Nezumi really was coming home to her son. 

Instead of voicing her many worries, Karan just smiled brightly at Shion. 

“Let’s give him something to come home to then, shall we?” She said, determined. 

Her son just smiled back at her, buoyed by Karan’s positivity. After all, this was what a mother was supposed to do.

She pushed aside the slight mess that they hadn’t yet cleaned up from the croissants and rolled out a new ball of dough. 

“What should we make for him? Do you know any of his favorites, Shion?” 

“Cherry cake. We should make cherry cake for Nezumi.”

“Cherry cake it’ll be, then.” Karan rolled her sleeves up past her elbows from where they had begun to sag down her forearms, wilting from hours of work she’d already done that morning. “Can you grab the cherries and pit them? They’re over in the bowl on the counter, dear.”

Shion shoved the sleeves of his sweater up, much less practiced than Karan. She noted them already beginning to sag and hid the way that her lips tugged upwards at the sight. It wouldn’t do to let Shion think that she was laughing at him, but she knew he’d be awkwardly tugging his sleeves up throughout the whole process, trying to avoid getting them caught up in the mess. 

Sometimes Karan was reminded that, for all his genius intellect, her son was not the best at thinking through the small details of life. That was okay though. It brought to mind his bright innocence from childhood. A lot of it had been lost, even just within the past two years, but it was nice to see the little places it still existed.

And standing there, looking at her son with his fingers stained pink from the juice of the cherries he was cutting, elbows kept stiffly at his sides in the hopes that his sweater sleeves wouldn’t dip down further than they already had, Karan couldn’t help the fierce love that welled up in her. 

She leaned up towards Shion and pressed a kiss to his cheek. 

“He’ll come back to you.” She reached up and tilted his chin so he was looking at her. “Because Shion? You are worth coming back to. And he is worth waiting for. And that’s how I know that Nezumi _will_ come back to you.”

Karan wiped a tear from his cheek and continued, hurting to see her son hurting, but knowing that he had to know this, especially if Nezumi hadn’t actually returned to the area yet. “He won’t be the same as when he left, in the same way that you aren’t the same Shion that he left behind here. All of us grow with each new experience, and the two of you have experienced a lot of new things since you parted ways. Nezumi might need more time to figure out who he is in the aftermath of everything, but Shion, even if he doesn’t come back today, or tomorrow, or even a month from now, he’ll come back to you. But for now, what you have to do is just keep moving forward. Exactly in the way you have been. Don’t forget about all the good you’ve done here. You’ll be able to meet him again as an equal, and if that means that you have to give him a good punch to the jaw for making you wait so long, then that’s what that means.”

A voice spoke up from the shop’s entrance, startling both Karan and Shion. 

“Maybe this wasn’t the best time to show my face, then,” Nezumi said ruefully. 

Karan heard Shion make a small, nearly inaudible gasp in the back of his throat as his breath hitched. 

And then he was moving, throwing himself at Nezumi. Nezumi flinched and took a half staggered step back, eyes wide, like he was actually expecting Shion to actually punch him. But no, Shion’s arms just wrapped around him. Just… holding him, like the thought of letting go was something he couldn’t bear. Nezumi visibly relaxed into his grasp. Shion’s arms just clutched Nezumi tighter.

Karan looked away from the two of them, trying to give them what privacy they could have here. Her eyes fell on the small pile of cherries that Shion had abandoned, only half of them pitted and cut. She set to the task herself, determined to finish the cherry cake that her son had wanted to give to Nezumi upon his return. 

And Karan, for once in a life filled with having to prove herself again and again in ways both big and small, had never been so happy to be wrong. 

Nezumi had come home, and he’d come home to her son. And that was all she could really ask for, as a mother. She’d shake down worlds for her son’s happiness – though recalling No.6’s crumbled walls, it seemed, she thought, not without humor – that he already had someone at his side that he could achieve that with. 

Karan moved on from the cherries and started preparing the dough. At the very least, she could supply them with a cherry cake to welcome them home.

**Author's Note:**

> A wish for a good year and decade for you!


End file.
